Yiannis Boutaris

Yiannis Boutaris (Γιάννης Μπουτάρης; born 13 June 1942 ) is a Greek Winemaker and politician who served as Mayor of Thessaloniki from 2011 to 2019. Since 2024 he serves as a municipal councilor of Thessaloniki, a position he held again from 2003 tο 2011.

Biography
Yiannis Boutaris is an Aromanian. He was born in Thessaloniki in 1942, the son of winemaker Stelios Boutaris and Fanny Vlachos. His parents were from Albanian and Aromanian background. His mother's family, the Nichota family, has its roots in the town of Kruševo, now in North Macedonia, while his father's family originates from the town of Vithkuq, in Albania.

His primary education was at the Experimental elementary school of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, his secondary education at Anatolia College, and he graduated in chemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1965 and in oenology from the Wine Institute of Athens in 1967. In his youth he was associated with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

From 1969 to 1996 he worked for the family wine company Boutari, based in Naoussa. He left the family company to create the Kir-Yianni wine company, based on two estates in abandoned village of Giannakochori and in Amyntaio, in 1998.

Boutaris has spoken several times openly about his struggle with alcoholism and his successful effort to quit drinking back in 1991. He is also a supporter of LGBT rights and the legalization of cannabis.

60th Mayor of Thessaloniki (2011–2019)
During the last decade he is one of the prominent figures of progressive views and politics in Greece as well as a founding member of the ecological organization Arcturos.

In 2012 he was chosen as 'the best mayor of the world' for the month of October, by the City Mayors Foundation, based in the UK.

In his program was the restoration of Agias Sofias Square and Eleftherias Square, as well as the construction of a Holocaust Museum in the city.

Boutaris also declared his wish to build an Islamic mosque, monuments to Thessaloniki's Jews and to the Young Turk Revolution. According to Boutaris, the construction of these monuments will attract Jewish and Turkish tourists to Thessaloniki, who will want to visit their fathers' hometown.

On May 20, 2018 he was treated in hospital after being beaten up by a group of Greek ultra-nationalists angry over his appearance at a remembrance event for the Pontic Greek victims by the Ottomans during WWI. The hardliners claimed that Boutaris made a controversial remark on the issue ("I don't give a shit" if Kemal Atatürk killed Greeks or not"). Boutaris has repeatedly angered hardliners in Greece because he tried to facilitate relations between Greece and its neighbors and because he opposed nationalist views on the Macedonia naming dispute, the history of the Greco–Turkish relations and the Holocaust of the Jews in Greece.   On the other hand he is widely respected amongst Muslims and ethnic Turks in Greece for his conciliatory efforts regarding the Greco-Turkish relations, the Jewish community, the Albanian community and the Greek Left.